This deep dive into the fastest-growing genre in music – Afrobeats – will you have you gripped from the start…
Sometimes, a non-fiction book grips you via the sheer enthusiasm of its author, before you even get into the content. And so it was for Conch Africa, when we read ‘A Quick Ting on Afrobeats’, by Cristian Adofo (Jaconda Books).
Part of a series celebrating Black British culture, this collection of eleven essays is dubbed as the ‘first book of its kind’ on the topic – and certainly, there is little else out there which offers such a deep dive into the social and cultural development of the exploding music genre.
London-born journalist Cristian is of Ghanaian descent. His parents migrated to the UK in the 60s, during the fallout of the military coup which rocked a relatively young country. It was the culture and beats and colour that people like Cristian’s parents brought over here from Ghana that subconsciously helped form the writer’s vision. And Cristian’s subsequent passion to chronicle that journey is palpable.
Afrobeats, with its flashy, often risqué lyrics and escapist three-minute tunes, has its lovers and its dissenters. Yet there’s no arguing the impact artists like Burna Boy and Rema have had, bagging Grammy awards and charting on international billboards. It put African music on the map in a way very few before them have. It feels like the right time to be reading a book looking at just what the fuss is all about.
And Cristian never talks down to his readers. Instead, he does a fascinating, well-researched job of tracing afrobeat’s colourful and intoxicating history, from Africa all the way to the high life bars of Berlin, to hip life and to what we now know as afrobeat (without the ‘s’) – and the enchanting descriptions of African food, daily life and politics, which are inextricably linked to its music, make it even harder to put down.
This striking little tome (can we get a moment for the gorgeousness of the yellow cover?) takes us both back to the very start of afrobeat as an evolving genre – i.e. to the big man himself, Father of Afrobeat, Nigerian icon Fela Kuti – and to the very beginning of Cristian’s fascination with music as a force for community, expression of one’s often conflicting feelings about culture, heritage – and, like all good music should be, as a way to totally lose oneself in the ecstasy of a moment.
As Cristian says in his introductory chapter, ‘Like most who have West African parents in the West, my relationship with this cultural phenomenon and its subsequent subgenres represents home. The question is: ‘how does one describe a sound/s or movement that embodies home?’
We’ll not give it away, but it all began with a love of UK funky house at sweaty student nights at university for this author, but also at hall parties where the local community brought him a million miles away from Britain’s capital and back to the land of his ancestors, which he would visit routinely as a teenager, every summer.
A little ting… pays homage to the pioneers, with some great insight from practitioners who were there at the time, celebrating standout moments and looking at the magical impact African migration, travel and modernisation has had on the genre that’s got the world eating out of its hand.
Its pocket-size means, like we did, you can dip in and out of it with ease, geekily taking notes so you can go check out any artists or historical moments you hadn’t heard of before as you go.
If you’re at all interested in African culture, and most definitely if you’re into afrobeat(s), your bookshelf cannot be without this joyful gem. Oh, and your playlist will thank us, too.
A Quick Ting on Afrobeats by Cristian Adofo (£9.99), is available at Jacaranda Books. Visit www.jacarandabooksartmusic.co.uk.
